• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Homophobia and Antisemitism.

firedragon

Veteran Member
since you state that you find the question insulting,

As who ever you are, making things up like I state the question is "insulting" which is something you just made up, is pretty cheap in my opinion. I didnt say anything is insulting. So rather than making up aunty sally's, why dont you engage with intellectual conversation?

Dont make up things and dont do fallacies like strawman and genetic fallacies.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
How did you make antisemitism and anti jewish the same? Do you not know there are semites that are not jewish? Also, dont you know there are jews who consider other jews as anti semites? Also, there are many many semites who are homophobic. So does that make those others who are anti semites pro phobic because semites are also homophobic? Or does that mean that anti semites are pro homo (if there is such a word) purely by the nature of anti semitism being against semites who are also homophobic?

As Kooky seems to be trying to drive home, all language is metaphorical, and all words are to one degree or another abstract generalizations. Therefore, I'm using the word "antisemite" or "antisemitic" in the general sense it's being used most of the time I've encountered it: a deep, or violent hatred of Jews.

Nevertheless, your statement (as well as Kooky seeming to attempt to hide behind the abstract, generalization process that is language itself), provides the best example yet of the thing in the cross-hairs of this examination.

In the sense that all thought is metaphorical, i.e., uses abstractions and concretizes (or reifies) mere memes, or ideas, therefore this abstraction process, this metaphorical stereotyping of things, constitutes, or to paraphrase Jaynes (who's quoted earlier in the thread), is the very ground, foundation, of the verbal thought process.

Therefore, when someone, in this case Kooky, calls another person out for using abstractions, metaphors, as though they, the abstractions, or metaphors, are some kind of foul, they, the person doing the calling out, appears to be situating him or herself outside the foundational necessity of normal language and thought in the very way Jewish-ness is situated outside of Gentile-ness, and homosexuality is situated outside heterosexuality.



John
 
Last edited:

firedragon

Veteran Member
As Kooky seems to be trying to drive home, all language is metaphorical, and all words are to one degree or another abstract generalizations. Therefore, I'm using the word "antisemite" or "antisemitic" in the general sense it's being used most of the time I've encountered it: a deep, or violent hatred of Jews.

Okay. So you are referring to western media. No worries. Understood.

Nevertheless, your statement (as well as Kooky seeming to attempt to hide behind the abstract, generalization process that is language itself), provides the best example yet of the thing in the cross-hairs of this examination.

Well, if hiding is your topic, you are in that case hiding behind propaganda phrases only good for hypocrites and the ignorant. So if that's the game you wish to play.

Therefore, when someone, in this case Kooky, calls another person out for using abstractions, metaphors, as though they, the abstractions, or metaphors, are some kind of foul, they, the person doing the calling out, appears to be situating him or herself outside the foundational necessity of normal language and thought in the very way Jewish-ness is situated outside of Gentile-ness, and homosexuality is situated outside heterosexuality.

There are jews who dont like your terminology and generalisation so this is just absurd.

Homo is absolutely not hetero. Its irrelevant to the above.
 

Kooky

Freedom from Sanity
This reminds me of my exasperation when, in primary school, the teacher chided me for stereotyping. I thought to myself, isn't all thought stereotypical to one extent or another? After all, as you yourself note, every word or idea is merely a generalization, and not the thing-itself.

The most fascinating property of language is its capacity to make metaphors. But what an understatement! For metaphor is not a mere extra trick of language, as it is so often slighted in the old schoolbooks on composition; it is the very constitutive ground of language.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, p. 48.​



John
Which is precisely why people tend to react so cross when you rub it in their faces that you (generic you) see them as nothing more than instances of a general category with no important individuality to speak of.
 

Kooky

Freedom from Sanity
As Kooky seems to be trying to drive home, all language is metaphorical, and all words are to one degree or another abstract generalizations. Therefore, I'm using the word "antisemite" or "antisemitic" in the general sense it's being used most of the time I've encountered it: a deep, or violent hatred of Jews.

Nevertheless, your statement (as well as Kooky seeming to attempt to hide behind the abstract, generalization process that is language itself), provides the best example yet of the thing in the cross-hairs of this examination.

In the sense that all thought is metaphorical, i.e., uses abstractions and concretizes (or reifies) mere memes, or ideas, therefore this abstraction process, this metaphorical stereotyping of things, constitutes, or to paraphrase Jaynes (who's quoted earlier in the thread), the very ground, foundation, of the verbal thought process.

Therefore, when someone, in this case Kooky, calls another person out for using abstractions, metaphors, as though they, the abstractions, or metaphors, are some kind of foul, they, the person doing the calling out, appears to be situating him or herself outside the foundational necessity of normal language and thought in the very way Jewish-ness is situated outside of Gentile-ness, and homosexuality is situated outside heterosexuality.



John
To be clear: I am not calling you out for using abstractions, I am calling you out for treating abstractions as a thing-in-itself and a definite entity with agency and goals when nothing could be further from the truth. There isn't even a signified to the signifier of this nature-god entity you have constructed in support of your argument to begin with.

It seems to me like you are simply replacing your notion of the divine with a metaphysical "nature" entity that acts for all purposes exactly like an Abrahamic god, homophobia included.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
To be clear: I am not calling you out for using abstractions, I am calling you out for treating abstractions as a thing-in-itself and a definite entity with agency and goals when nothing could be further from the truth.

And my point is that there is no thing-in-itself in language and thought. Just abstract metaphors.

So to call someone out for using the abstract, metaphorical nature of language, and thought, as though their belief that it can transfer a thought in an acceptable way is errant, or pointless, seems misplaced, since it's all we have to make our point.

Even your calling me out was done using the very abstract metaphors you're calling me out for taking seriously. Perhaps that's your way of letting me know not to take your calling me out seriously?:)



John
 
Last edited:

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
You are quite correct that there is no Archimedean point from which we would be able to view our society - we are effectively different kind of fish talking about the quality of the water that surrounds us. In this, the point of view I took was very much an intellectual conceit rather than an accurate representation of my own situation, and you are correct in pointing that out. To be fair, I do not know any other way to construct my argument than thusly, perhaps due to a flaw in the way I've acquired my arguments and positions on the matter or a fundamental deficiency on the intellectual end; or perhaps, a simple inability to frame this debate in any other way but in the assumption of a fictitious outside observer role that I cannot actually inhabit in earnest.

Where it seems like we differ is that whereas we both seem to appreciate the abstract and metaphorical nature of language, you, logically I might add, appear to assume that there's nothing grounding the abstractions and metaphors that would tie them to some kind of Platonic real world or some kind of metaphysical truth.

I, on the other hand, though I get everything you're saying about the abstract nature of language, and metaphor, believe that there is some kind of invisible spirit, that anchors the power of language and thought so that though they are just as metaphorical and abstract as you say they are, nevertheless they work, and they work best, when some inkling of the nature of the spirit capitalizing their ability to work is appreciated.



John
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
And I guess before we could answer that last question, we need to determine if homosexuality is a chosen preference, or something as natural to the cosmos as heterosexuality? Same with Jewishness. Is it a chosen preference, or is it a real, scientific, transformation of a Gentile body into something just as natural to the nature of the cosmos? We have to distinguish between chosen preferences, which are mental constructs (perhaps ideological), versus scientific realities that are hardwired into the nature --the physics ---of the world.

This latter point is important to this entire examination since there's a giant difference between mental constructs versus physical realities. Is homosexuality a preference or a physical reality? Is Jewishness a preference, a mental or ideological construct, or a physical reality? The questions are important since heterosexuality is a scientific and physical reality hardwired into the very physics of the cosmos. Gentile biology and personhood is, as the definition of humanity, hardwired into the very physical reality of the cosmos. Are homosexuality and Jewishness like heterosexuality and Gentile-ness or are they mental constructs and ideological prejudices? If someone says the former, then science must be capable of determining how the secondary phenomenon (the epiphenomenon) arises from the primary, original, phenomenon?

My personal experiences and studies convince me that Jewishness, and homosexuality, are physical realities, and not ideological choices, or even, in the most fundamental sense, choices at all (though there are also those who choose to be Jewish and or homosexual).

This being the case, the question is still: how does the Jew come from the pre-existing Gentile, and how does the homosexual come from the pre-existing heterosexual beginning?

My answer is that the original human was homosexual, since there wasn't but one gender, or genitalia, and similarly the original human was Jewish.

From this stance, it's heterosexuality, and Gentile reality, that though they appear original, and the place from whence Jewishness and homosexuality arise, is not the truth of the matter but only an empirical prejudice related to false history, and the covering up of Genesis through misunderstanding the past, and thus the present, and most dangerously the future.



John
 

Kooky

Freedom from Sanity
And my point is that there is no thing-in-itself in language and thought. Just abstract metaphors.

So to call someone out for using the abstract, metaphorical nature of language, and thought, as though their belief that it can transfer a thought in an acceptable way is errant, or pointless, seems misplaced, since it's all we have to make our point.

Even your calling me out was done using the very abstract metaphors you're calling me out for taking seriously. Perhaps that's your way of letting me know not to take your calling me out seriously?:)
Sure. If you don't feel like debating this in good faith, then we can just stop talking to one another.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
Sure. If you don't feel like debating this in good faith, then we can just stop talking to one another.

It seems like you admitted that you don't believe you have a perch outside of socio-cultural prejudices with which you could in good faith comment on socio-cultural prejudice? Or did I misread you?



John
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
My personal experiences and studies convince me that Jewishness, and homosexuality, are physical realities, and not ideological choices, or even, in the most fundamental sense, choices at all (though there are also those who choose to be Jewish and or homosexual).

This being the case, the question is still: how does the Jew come from the pre-existing Gentile, and how does the homosexual come from the pre-existing heterosexual beginning?

My answer is that the original human was homosexual, since there wasn't but one gender, or genitalia, and similarly the original human was Jewish.

From this stance, it's heterosexuality, and Gentile reality, that though they appear original, and the place from whence Jewishness and homosexuality arise, is not the truth of the matter but only an empirical prejudice related to false history, and the covering up of Genesis through misunderstanding the past, and thus the present, and most dangerously the future.

When Mr. Trask asked Col. Slade if he was finished (in Scent of a Woman): slowly shaking his head Slade said: "Ahmm jus getin stahdid . . . .."

This is like that.



John
 
Last edited:
Top